Site Mobile Navigation

Complaint Seeks Punishment for Classification of Documents

WASHINGTON — In a rare symbolic strike against unnecessary government secrecy, the government’s former classification czar has filed a formal complaint against the National Security Agency and Justice Department seeking punishment of officials who classified a document that he says contained no secrets.

The former official, J. William Leonard, said that in his 34 years with the federal government he saw routine overclassification of government documents, rarely saw it challenged and never saw it punished. But now that the Justice Department is seeking to imprison government workers for leaking classified information to the news media, Mr. Leonard said, it is especially critical to make sure that only genuine secrets are protected by law.

“If you’re talking about throwing someone in jail for years, there absolutely has to be responsibility for decisions about what gets classified,” said Mr. Leonard, who directed the Information Security Oversight Office from 2002 to 2007.

He said in an interview Monday that he filed a formal complaint on Saturday with his former office, seeking to force the two agencies to take disciplinary measures against officials who violated classification rules. Under the executive order governing classification, the punishment could include dismissal, suspension without pay, reprimand or loss of a security clearance.

Photo

J. William Leonard accused the government of improperly seeking punishment in a federal secrets case.Credit
Jamie Rose for The New York Times

The document Mr. Leonard singled out was an N.S.A. e-mail entitled “What a Success” that was among classified material Thomas A. Drake, a former senior N.S.A. official, was accused of illegally storing at home and disclosing to The Baltimore Sun. Before Mr. Drake’s scheduled trial in June, prosecutors dropped the major charges against him under the Espionage Act. Mr. Drake admitted to a misdemeanor, got no prison time and paid no fine. The judge, Richard D. Bennett of Federal District Court in Maryland, berated prosecutors for how they handled the case.

Mr. Leonard had agreed to testify for the defense without pay as an expert in government classification, saying the e-mail should never have been classified. The N.S.A. declassified the e-mail before trial, but its contents are still protected by court order. Mr. Leonard was allowed to read the e-mail but cannot disclose its contents other than to say it contained no secrets.

“I’ve never seen a more deliberate and willful example of government officials improperly classifying a document,” he said.

Even after the criminal case against Mr. Drake collapsed, Mr. Leonard said, he was outraged by the fact that the document had been classified in the first place and then used as the basis for a felony charge. He petitioned Judge Bennett for permission to use the still-protected e-mail in his complaint to the Information Security Oversight Office, and Judge Bennett agreed to allow that in a court order on Friday.

Spokeswomen for the N.S.A. and the Justice Department declined to comment.

According to the information security office, officials classified nearly 77 million documents last year, a 40 percent increase in one year, though the office said the jump resulted in part from improved reporting by government officials.

Photo

Thomas A. Drake, a former senior N.S.A. official, was accused of illegally storing classified material at home and disclosing it to The Baltimore Sun.Credit
Timothy Jacobsen/Associated Press

Many government veterans agree that far too much information is classified.

“Depending on who you ask, overclassification is either very widespread or extremely widespread,” said Steven Aftergood, an expert on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “Everybody from the director of national intelligence to President Obama has acknowledged the problem.”

The Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks has hugely raised the stakes for whistle-blowers. Mr. Drake is among five people charged with disclosing secrets to the news media under Mr. Obama, compared with three under all previous presidents.

While bureaucrats regularly get in trouble for failing to classify information their bosses think should be secret, Mr. Aftergood said he had never heard of anyone being punished for unjustified classification. He praised Mr. Leonard’s complaint as an effort to restore some balance.

Under Mr. Obama’s 2009 order on classification, all agencies are supposed to review secret material by next June to see what can be declassified. But Mr. Aftergood said there was little evidence that agencies were working hard toward that goal.

“My hope is that Mr. Leonard’s complaint will lend some impetus to the process,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on August 2, 2011, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Complaint Seeks Punishment for Classification of Documents. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe